


Alder's World Part One  Chapter One

by JoelStottlemire



Category: Dryden Universe
Genre: Creative License, Science Fiction, scifi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 16:33:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4571676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoelStottlemire/pseuds/JoelStottlemire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Alder and the crew of the Duster encounter a strange object in space that will change their lives forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alder's World Part One  Chapter One

“The First Drop”  
Lieutenant Commander Alder tapped nervously on the screen in front of him, flipping back and forth between external camera views. All the cameras showed different views of the same thing, “Mass 17” a mess of strings and ropes half the size of Jupiter but only maybe two thirds the mass of Earth. It was weird, too weird for Alder. In fourteen years as chief science officer for the LOP Duster, he’d seen a lot of weird things; planets in counter rotational orbits, biospheres composed entirely of Sulfur eating sludges, he’d even watched two stars smack into each other from a distance of only one light year. But, he’d never seen anything that he couldn’t explain with good old Terran physics.  
Alder’s face was youthful for his forty-five years. Only the grey in the stocky hair of his temples gave any hint that he was over forty. His face mostly remembered his Asian ancestors. It was broad and golden toned. His nose was high though, and not very wide; the result of Irish or other European stock. Like most people of the age, he was a mix. People who grew up on one planet or another sometimes couldn’t even remember what parts of Earth their families were from. Though he’d moved from planet to planet as a child and had never been to Earth, he found it fascinating to look at a globe and think, “Someone crawled into a space ship here or here.” It was an odd curiosity but he knew, with some certainty, where the Earth homes of at least five of his ancestors were.  
He grimaced and tapped another control. He’d been a lot younger when he approached the League of Planets to request inclusion in one of their deep space missions; young and excited to see what was new, to be part of the first wave of human explorers to leave the star systems around Sol. Now, fourteen years later and more than a thousand light years from the ancestor planet, League Prime or anywhere else humans lived, he liked things to be canny. The ship was older, he was older. While 3-d printers ranged around the ship meant that they could remake almost anything machine that broke and similar technology in the medical bay meant that he could be largely rebuilt as well, the odds still being alive when Captain Pilton finally turned for home went up when things were canny and predictable.  
The planet sized ball of space yarn he was studying was as uncanny, even creepy, as it could get. At first, as of yet unnamed Star System -89.6, 1.44, 1107.3 hadn’t seemed that unusual; mid aged protoplanetary disc around a fairly new Class A star. It wasn’t until the Duster actually got into the system that things started turning up funny. First, there was the number of protoplanets, there were 914, which was completely impossible. Second, the computer had worked out somehow that all 914 masses currently spread helter-skelter around the system, would eventually intercept each other and settle down into only two massive gas giant planets each orbiting less than half the distance from the Earth to the sun – also impossible.  
The final weirdness was that the protoplanets weren’t protoplanets at all. The object on his screen was everything you’d expect to find in a protoplanetary disk; lots of dust, a fair array of gasses, some metals but it was neither swirling around nor settled into a planet. Something, no one knew what, was holding millions of tons of what could have been an Earth like planet strung out like metal filings around a magnet. Radar showed that there was a tiny, solid dot in the middle but gave no clue about what it might be. The only instrument that was giving any indication of what could be holding the thing together was the gravity wave detector and the things it was saying would give any sane physicist nightmares.  
“It has to be alien intelligence.” Alder had insisted at the command meeting a few days before.  
“How can you be so sure?” Captain Pilton had asked, gazing out of the conference room window at the dark mass in the sky, moodily lit by the blue, white star. His smooth skinned, boyish face bore a jagged scar from shrapnel he’d picked up off a failed pressure container a few years before but his voice was steady and his eyes a clear, steel blue. “There are a lot of natural phenomena that produce orderly patterns, spontaneous alignments in crystals for example.”  
Alder rubbed the back of his hand against the stubble on his chin. This was really just rhetorical. Once Pilton got curious about something, you investigated. He’d been selected to captain a science vessel in deep space because he was naturally curious and now, twice a far from Earth as any previous ship, he showed no signs of letting up. Alder sighed and had a go anyway. “Sure, nature produces a diamond every now and then, but these masses are two orders more complex. One, there’s no known force that could be holding so much mass in those weird knots. The only possible comparison is Make Make and Dark Companion, also never explained. Two, nature doesn’t send 914 objects on a course that will randomly form two almost identical gas giants. It has to be alien intelligence.”  
“I’m confused.” The voice was Tallen, the stocky, usually grouchy, chief of security. “I thought the two planets weren’t going to form for hundreds of thousands of years.”  
“Right.” Alder agreed. “though it appears the some of the larger masses may be smaller masses that have already intercepted each other.  
“Then how long have these balls been floating around?”  
Alder licked his lips. “This is all new science, but it looks as if these masses started forming almost 1.2 million years ago.”  
There was a silence in the room. “You’re suggesting that an alien life form visited this star system more than a million years ago and rearranged it so that it would form gas giant planets eons later?” The question came from Wei, the ship’s chief systems officer.  
“Yes.” Alder sighed. “Yes. That’s what I’m suggesting. It looks like they started a process that is meant to complete once the star gets to a more stable point in its lifecycle.”  
The silence returned. Everyone glanced at the Captain. He stared out at Mass 17 as if he could discern his secrets with his piercing stare. Alright.” He said finally. “We’re an exploration ship. Let’s explore. Martin,” he spoke to the ship’s pilot, “you say you can fly the scout through the dust?”

“Yes, Captain. The cloud is massive but not dense. We should be able to fly all the way to the object in the middle. We should be able to get a good look anyway.”  
A good look? Alder glanced at the life support readouts on Martin and the two crew members who’d flown into Mass 17 with him. None of their displays showed any activity. Whatever it was they were looking at was playing merry hob with their radio transmitters. He’d heard no word for more than two hours. He was tapping the screen again when he was interrupted by a hissing noise.  
Switching to another screen he slid up a control and was pleased to see Martin’s face, his yellow, curly hair almost obscuring his eyes where it was trapped under his helmet. “Lance One to Dust. Lance One to Dust.”  
“This is Dust. Go ahead.” Alder said. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the life support readouts for the crew coming on one by one.  
“Yeah. We’re on the surface. There’s a lot of static electricity in the cloud. It blanked us out. I’ve switched to the microwave transmitter. It doesn’t seem to be affected by the storm.”  
Alder glanced at a camera above his workstation. Although he was deep in the science station at the base of the ship, he knew Pilton and the others were watching from the bridge. “Surface? What surface?”  
“We’re down on the central object. It’s got half a G worth of gravity.”  
“Half a G on an object that small? It’s not possible.”  
“Yeah, I know.” Martin agreed. “But here we are.”  
“I’m not getting any environment data on this line. Do you have a visual feed for me?”  
“Better than that.” Martin grinned. “I’ve got the ring on my helmet going. You’re going to want your mask.”  
“You can see something?” The sensors on Lance One were reporting but the data Alder was getting didn’t make much sense.  
“Just put on your mask.” Martin grinned again. His face was big and gave a loose, friendly smile.  
Reaching to his right, Alder grabbed a visor/headset and slipped it over his graying temples. Immediately he was greeted by a 360 degree view of the inside of Lance One’s cockpit thanks to a dozen tiny cameras in a ring around Martin’s helmet. He looked around. “Very nice.” He said. He’d years before gotten used to the idea that he could “see” out the back of Martin’s head.  
“Yeah. Just wait. Jinx and Pakerson are already inside.”  
“Inside?”  
“Yeah, inside.” Alder waited while Martin made his way through the Lance’s air lock. His brow furrowed when Martin emerged into the strange space beyond.  
“What am I looking at?” He asked peering around in the gloom. The scene was dark, lit only by the Lance’s landing lights.  
“I’m not sure.” Martin’s heavy breathing came over the line with his voice. “We landed on a surface, some kind of weird polymer. Pakerson did a reading. I don’t know what she saw but it sure turned her on. Whatever this thing is, it isn’t nearly big enough to justify a half-g. I flew all the way around it before we landed. The diameter is just over two kilometers.”  
“Around? It’s a sphere?”  
“It’s a sphere all right with regular bumps and openings. Check this out.”  
The screen went blurry as Martin swung around and dipped suddenly below the surface.  
“Are you getting this?” Alder asked the bridge while waiting for the image to clear.  
“Roger.” Came Pilton’s breathless reply.  
“Okay. So I’m sliding down the wall of this sort of canyon. There are maybe twelve of them spread evenly around the equator of the sphere. I think they must be some kind of wave guide or something because the gravity is stronger here. I’m experiencing almost a full-G right now pulling me toward the sides of the canyon and also down. I’ll be able to stand again when the canyon turns slightly at about 300 meters.”  
Gravity wave guides were beyond human technology but Alder could imagine it at least. “Roger. Where does it lead?”  
“Almost there. I’m back on my feet. It’s as if I’m stumbling down a steep incline.”  
From inside the virtual mask, Alder almost felt as if he were traveling down the deep canyon with Martin. He could just make out the canyon rim high above him and was dazzled by the rhythmic texture on the walls as Martin’s lights played around. He found himself matching the rhythm of Martin’s breathing.   
“Do you remember that hike we took through that Keyhole canyon on Gayson?” Martin asked.  
“Yeah sure.” Alder agreed. “Binary star system, real water vapor clouds, blinding swarms of alien bugs. It was beautiful. Made me wish we had dates with us.”  
“Come on princess.” Martin chided. “You know you’d been working for months to get a little alone time with me.”   
Alder snorted. “I should have left you with the bugs. They were the one’s trying to get into your suit.”  
Martin laughed. “There is one thing that could have made that hike better. It could have ended in a sight like this.”  
Alder gasped when the space in front of Martin opened suddenly. The walls vanished and he found himself staring around a vast, round room. Pakerson and Jinx in their pressurized suits looked like glittering beetles in the darkness. Openings like the ones that Martin had just come out of appeared at regular intervals around the circumference as far as the three crew members’ feeble lights were able to illuminate. It was what was in the vast space that his mind refused to comprehend.  
“How big is it?” He finally managed to ask.  
“We measure it at 93.6 meters to a side and it’s perfectly smooth.” Pakerson broke in, glancing over her shoulder from where she and Jinx were setting up equipment.   
“Exactly square?”  
“Exactly. Each plane 93.6 meters.” Pakerson’s calm voice hid any excitement.  
“A perfect cube inside a sphere. That’s intelligence.” Alder mused, staring through Martin’s helmet. The thing that towered over Pakerson and Jinx, was silver black, faintly metallic; a massive, perfect cube floating in the darkness “What’s holding it up?”  
“We kind of think it is up.” Martin chimed back in. “We think it’s generating those nuts gravity waves we’ve been reading. There’s a rhythm to its energy output. Up down every few tenths of a second and the gravity in here is funky. I’m at half a G now pointed toward my feet but Pakerson and Jinx are almost neutral. It’s like there are gravity wave forms around the room.”  
Alder’s brain spun. For a second he was caught in the vertigo of the huge room his crew mates were in.   
“All right. Uhh. What sort of energy signals are you getting?”  
“Not much.” Pakerson answered. “There’s some low level electrical output but we can’t detect whatever is generating the gravity...other than the fact that we’re experiencing gravity. Jinx has almost got the sensor array online.”  
Breathless moments passed while Jinx and Pakerson worked with the scientific instrument and the cube hung before them in omnipresent silence. Finally, a light turned green and the machine flared to life.   
“Okay.” Pakerson started narrating, her tall, athletic frame towering over Jinx and the sensor set. “Radar is unable to pierce the object. Looks like we’ve got a surface of some kind of ceramic, but we do detect some energy sources inside, very faint. We’ll have to take a closer look later at a higher power setting. There’s a little bit of gas in here with us. Just traces of Oxygen and Hydrogen.”  
The video on Alder’s mask shuddered slightly. “What was that?”  
“I don’t know.” Martin’s voice shot back. “The whole place just gave a little shake.”  
“Do you think they heard us?” Jinx laughed nervously.  
“We’ve got changes.” Pakerson reported. “An electrical current just ran over the surface of the cube. Small, a few microvolts, but the surface is heating.”  
“Heating? How?”  
“Ummm.” Pakerson seemed confused.  
“There’s a chemical reaction taking place.” Jinx jumped in. “Just a sec.”  
“Look up.” Alder ordered. “Martin, look up at the cube.”  
Martin complied, his lights playing on the shadowy form. “Hey, I think they did hear us. The surface is changing, just a little. Can you guys see it? It’s like a texture is forming or...wait, it’s getting wet.”  
“Surface temperature climbing. Oh.” Pakerson gasped. “A power source just activated inside the cube. Maybe twenty volts. Chemical battery maybe.”  
“What chemicals are active at these temperatures?” Jinx mused back.  
“What do you mean wet?” Alder asked. “It’s 100 degrees below freezing in there.”  
“I’m going to get closer.” Martin’s cameras bobbed and weaved as he made his way through the strange gravity. “It may just be the optics but the surface looked dry a minute ago and now it looks wet.”  
“Be careful.” Alder said, pointlessly.  
Martin grunted as he struggled through the lumpy gravity to get closer to the nearest point of the cube.   
“Is there any water?” He asked.  
“No.” Came Pakerson’s tense reply. “But the Oxygen level is rising. Also, some other trace gasses. Surface temperature is up 10k from initial readings.”  
Martin’s lights were playing up and down the surface of the cube from about a meter away. “It really looks wet you guys. Are you seeing this?”  
Alder grunted. “Yes. The reflectivity has changed. Look around. Are there any other changes in the cube?”  
“Hey yeah.” Martin’s lights moved down to the finely formed point of the cube. “There’s a drop forming here.”  
As Alder watched, a single drop, black in Martin’s lights, fell off the point of the cube and drifted lazily down to the surface of the sphere below where it vanished in the glare.  
“This is tunneling.” Pakerson announced.  
Several half remembered papers on low temperature chemistry bustled into Alder’s mind. “Tunneling? Are you sure?”  
“It has to be. There are several processes happening here one of which is chlorination of ammonia.”  
“It is waking up.” Alder muttered to himself.  
“Uh guys?”  
“Okay Pakerson, I need this data. Can you ask the sensor array to pass data to your suit? That should get the data sent here.”  
“Guys!” Martin’s voice interrupted.  
Glancing up, Alder gasped. Thousands of kilometers away but seemingly right before him, Martin’s left hand was in the lights. A tiny dot of the black liquid was hissing and writhing on his fingertip like water on hot grease. Images flashed before Alder’s mind; the incident on solar comet 2196 A. A University of Mars researcher’s self replicating nanobots had gone amok and replicated the entire comet out of existence in a matter of hours.  
“Martin, get that off your finger now! You’re boiling it with your lights!” It was too late. With a hiss and a squeal, the nanobots ate through the outer layer of Martin’s suit.  
“What the hell man?”   
“Don’t hold your breath!” Pakerson shouted. “Let the suit adjust to the pressure loss.”  
“Get it off your finger!” Alder shouted. “You’re too hot.”   
“I’m too hot? What?”   
“Just do it!”   
Martin cursed, flung himself down, and began scraping his hand back and forth furiously on the floor of the sphere.  
“Turn everything on his suit off.” Alder ordered Pakerson and Jinx who were clumsily bounding up behind Martin.  
“Why?” Jinx asked.  
“Those are self-replicating nanobots. The hotter they get, the faster they eat.” Cool him off.  
The squeal from Martin’s suit was growing and he grunted in pain. “My ears.”  
“Just don’t hold your breath.” Pakerson demanded, trying to grab his swinging arm. “Let the suit adjust.”  
“I’ve got an emergency bubble.” Jinx offered, pulling at the belt on his spacesuit. “Get him to hold still.”  
“Forget the emergency bubble.” Alder barked. “We’ve got to get it off of him first.”  
“It hurts.” Martin complained.  
“Just keep breathing. Your ears will adjust.”  
“No.” Martin protested. “My finger. My finger hurts.”  
Pakerson held Martin’s hand up into the light. The drop was gone, replaced by a hissing hole in the index finger of the suit. As they watched, a thin stream of red, frozen instantly by the extreme cold, began jetting out with the gas from inside.  
“Hold him still.” Jinx demanded.  
“No!” Alder yelled. He swung his head to the right. “Computer! Priority voice authorization. Alder Samuel C. Respond.”  
“Lieutenant Commander Alder Samuel C, priority authorized.” The computer responded emotionlessly.  
“Sam, what are you doing?” Pilton’s voice jumped on the line.  
Alder ignored him. “Computer. This is a level one biological emergency. Subject Martin, Caleb A. is infected with a pathogen type seven, type three, possibly type nine. Confirm.”  
The computer began reciting the information back but Alder spoke over it. “Officers Pakerson and Jinx, subject Martin, Caleb A is a level one biological threat as is your environment.” Red lights began flashing around the science bay.” You are to exit the area immediately. Repeat evacuate immediately.”  
“What? and just leave him?” Jinx asked.  
“Fuck that.” Came Pakerson’s reply.  
“What the hell Sam?” Martin asked, his voice squealing as the suit struggled to keep up with growing gas leak.   
“I’m…I’m sorry. Pakerson and Jinx you are ordered to leave now.”  
“No way. I’m not leaving him.” Jinx knelt over Martin, the plastic emergency bubble in his hands.  
“Carol.” Alder, plead to Pakerson. “Carol, you need to look up now.”  
As Pakerson turned, her lights moved up into the nightmare Alder knew she would see. The surface of the cube had dissolved, turning in only a few seconds into a writhing, swirling cloud.  
“What the...?” She gasped. “What is it?”  
“Just run!” Alder ordered. “Just run!”


End file.
